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Published: July 19th 2023
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We spend the morning doing very little, something our cute apartment is very well suited to - double glass doors opening onto a large terrace with stunning views down over Playa Burriana.
Eventually I succumb to itchy feet and head out for an aimless wander. It feels a bit on the warm side, and it seems that this would indeed be an accurate assessment. News outlets are reporting that southern Europe, particularly Italy, Greece and Spain, are in the grip of a massive heat wave, with the head of the World Health Organisation tweeting yesterday that “in many parts of the world, today is predicted to be the hottest day on record”. The weather system that’s causing all of this has been dubbed Charon, after the mythical Greek boatman who ferried lost souls off into underworld, where it was presumably also thought to be a tad on the warm side.
After an hour or so I conclude that it’s a bit warm today for aimless wandering, something that should probably have been obvious 55 or so minutes ago, so I seek solace in the air conditioned comfort of the Nerja Museum.
I’m not usually a big fan of
museums, but this one’s actually pretty good. The ever-reliable Wikipedia doesn't shed overly much light on Nerja’s history, but this place makes up for it in spades. A lot of the displays are about the Nerja Caves and the prehistoric artefacts and cave paintings from up to 42,000 years ago that have been found there. It seems there’s evidence of Phoenician settlements in the Nerja area from around the sixth or so century BC, and of course the Romans were here too, as well as seemingly everywhere else around these parts.
The museum claims that the great Moorish leader Abd al-Rahman I made landfall from Morocco on “our” Burriana Beach in 755 AD. He was the founder of the Umayyad Dynasty, which ruled much of the Iberian peninsula for nearly three centuries. Now the ever-reliable claims that ”his landing site was unconfirmed”, and was likely to have been Almunecar which is about 15 kilometres east of here, but the Museum is in no doubt - in their eyes he landed right here in Nerja, on Burriana Beach, and no correspondence will be entered into …..
In more modern times it seems the now majestic Balcón de Europe was
once the site of a tower housing a Napoleonic French gun emplacement. The British weren’t overly keen on Napoleon’s antics, so teamed up with Spanish guerillas to try to oust him from these parts. In 1812 a couple of British warships fired on the tower and destroyed it. And the evidence of that hit is there for all to see today - a couple of rusty cannons, and some extremely large lumps of rock being smashed by the waves at the base of the balcony.
It’s still ridiculously hot so I decide to take a cooling dip in the apartment complex’s pool. Did I say “cooling”? I feel like I’ve dived into a warm bath; we don’t run our spa that hot. At least the water in our shower’s still cold.
As we head out in search of supplies and dinner we pass a young couple who appear to be in the midst of some sort of disagreement. It sounds to our very untrained ears as if English is her native language, and Spanish his, and the rather loud discussion is in equal parts both. She is not happy. It seems he has committed a major infraction of
some sort. He’s trying to plead his innocence with “pero, pero, pero”, which I think roughly translates to “but, but, but”, to which the response is a very emphatic “pero f**k off”. I think I’ve got a fair idea who’s going to be sleeping on the couch tonight …
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D MJ Binkley
Dave and Merry Jo Binkley
A hot summer
Historically interesting part of the world, The pool was not refreshing.